September Celebrity Birthdays
A look at the famous and the fascinating on the day they were born
AARP Members Only Access, September 2022
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PHOTO BY: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images
Sept. 30: Fran Drescher, 65
Born in Queens on Sept. 30, 1957, Fran Drescher, 65, had her first taste of fame when she was named runner-up at the 1973 Miss New York Teenager pageant. After her debut acting gig in Saturday Night Fever and subsequent roles in films like American Hot Wax and This Is Spinal Tap, Drescher got her big break in 1993 with the sitcom The Nanny, which she conceived of herself and pitched to the president of CBS after bumping into him on a flight to Paris. Known for her distinctive nasal accent and flamboyant costumes, bridal shop employee–turned–nanny Fran Fine became one of the most beloved sitcom characters of the ’90s, and Drescher earned two Emmy nominations for outstanding lead actress in comedy. The sitcom has remained a favorite in the nearly three decades since it premiered, and Drescher is even working on a Broadway musical adaptation with Crazy Ex-Girlfriend star Rachel Bloom. She parlayed that sitcom success into film roles, such as The Beautician and the Beast and Picking Up the Pieces. In June 2000, Drescher was diagnosed with uterine cancer, but doctors caught it early, and she turned her survival story into The New York Times best-selling book Cancer Schmancer and decades of tireless advocacy. Drescher returned to television with the sitcoms Living with Fran, in which she starred as a mother of two who falls in love with a man half her age, and Happily Divorced, which she cocreated with her ex-husband Peter Marc Jacobson based on their life together: After 21 years of marriage, he came out as gay, but they still remained close collaborators. In recent years, Drescher made her Broadway debut in Cinderella as the evil stepmother, voiced the Bride of Frankenstein–inspired Eunice Stein in the Hotel Transylvania animated series and appeared in yet another short-lived comedy series, Indebted, in 2020. Last year, in a major change of pace, she was elected the new president of the actors’ trade union SAG-AFTRA. “All of the Zen masters say don’t try and swim upstream, just let life come to you,” Drescher told Vanity Fair. “When this came to me as an opportunity to run, I really thought, ‘This seems to be an amalgam of many of my strengths and accomplishments coming to a point in this one defining moment.’ ” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Tony R. Phipps/WireImage/Getty Images
Sept. 29: Jerry Lee Lewis, 87
Born on Sept. 29, 1935, in Ferriday, Louisiana, Jerry Lee Lewis, 87, showed so much musical potential from an early age that his father mortgaged the family farm to buy him his own piano at the age of 10. Following his first public performance at the opening of a local car dealership, Lewis moved up to Memphis, where he began working as a studio musician for Sun Studios, and his jams with up-and-comers Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash would later be immortalized as the Million Dollar Quartet session. In 1957, he released his first major hits, “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” and “Great Balls of Fire,” and his outrageous stage persona earned him the nickname The Killer. But just as his star was beginning to rise, Lewis faced major criticism when in 1958 he married his 13-year-old cousin, Myra Gale Brown, resulting in boycotts of his records and live shows. He’d have a few more minor rock hits with singles like a cover of Ray Charles’s “What’d I Say,” before pivoting in the 1970s to country, with chart-topping singles like “There Must Be More to Love Than This” and “Once More with Feeling.” In 1986, he was part of the first class of inductees into the new Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and by the end of the decade, his music reached a new generation of fans when Dennis Quaid played him in the biopic Great Balls of Fire! Later in life, Lewis has continued releasing new music, including the duets albums Last Man Standing (2006), which featured guest vocals by Bruce Springsteen and Mick Jagger, and Mean Old Man (2010). His most recent album was 2014’s Rock & Roll Time. This spring, Ethan Coen released Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind, a documentary made up almost exclusively of old performance clips and TV interviews, and its subject also received another unexpected honor when he was finally inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. “I was wondering if they were ever going to induct me,” he said at a press conference. “But they’ve come around and I was really glad and grateful.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Stephane Cardinale - Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images
Sept. 28: Naomi Watts, 54
Two-time Oscar nominee Naomi Watts, 54, was born in Shoreham, England, on Sept. 28, 1968, to two creative types: Her mother was a costume and set designer, her father the road manager of Pink Floyd. When Watts was 14, the family settled in Australia, and it was there that she met her best friend, Nicole Kidman, when they shared a taxi after a bikini commercial audition. Following parts in films like For Love Alone and Wide Sargasso Sea, Watts moved to Los Angeles, and her first American film was the British comic strip adaptation, Tank Girl. Critics started to take notice when she was cast in the dual starring roles in David Lynch’s surrealist Mulholland Drive, which was later named the best film of the 21st century in a poll by BBC Culture. She then starred in the massive horror hit, The Ring, before earning her first Oscar nomination starring as a recovering drug addict in 21 Grams. During the next decade, Watts excelled across genres, in thrillers like Eastern Promises, period pieces like The Painted Veil, comedies like I Heart Huckabees and epic blockbusters like Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake, in which she starred as ingenue Ann Darrow. In 2012, Watts picked up a second Oscar nod for The Impossible, about a family fighting for their lives during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. After a rare misstep in the critically reviled Diana biopic, she appeared in well-liked films including Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) and St. Vincent, and she also found success on the small screen, appearing in the Netflix drama Gypsy, reteaming with David Lynch for the Twin Peaks reboot series and starring as Fox News host Gretchen Carlson in the Roger Ailes miniseries The Loudest Voice. This fall, she goes back to her scream queen roots with two new projects: The English-language remake of the Austrian film Goodnight Mommy and the Ryan Murphy–produced true-crime miniseries The Watcher, about a suburban family terrorized by notes from a stalker who calls himself The Watcher. As she told Entertainment Weekly, “It’s a genre that you know I love.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Jordan Strauss / Invision / AP
Sept. 27: Marc Maron, 59
Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, on Sept. 27, 1963, and then raised in Alaska and New Mexico, Marc Maron, 59, spent his childhood listening to comedy records by the likes of Richard Pryor and George Carlin. After graduating from Boston University, he moved out to L.A. to pursue his stand-up dreams, eventually working as the doorman at the Comedy Store; he’d become a protégé of sorts to comedian Sam Kinison, adopting his destructive abuse of cocaine and alcohol. Maron went on to live and work in Boston and San Francisco, before settling into the alt comedy scene in 1990s New York, and he became a regular guest on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, appearing more than 30 times. In 1998, after a trip to Israel, Maron developed the off-Broadway show Jerusalem Syndrome to explore his own Jewish identity. “Ambiguity is expected of Mr. Maron: one reason he and a few like-minded comics adopted the label alternative in the mid-1990s was to signal audiences that they were not quick-laugh artists like most stand-up comics,” D.J.R. Bruckner wrote in The New York Times. “Mr. Maron in particular has often explored fairly sophisticated ideas in sizzling exchanges with his audience.” Maron started a stint with Air America Radio in 2004, and he was repeatedly fired and rehired, and he used the studios to begin what would become his signature career achievement: his podcast WTF with Marc Maron. What began as a way to chat with fellow comics developed into one of the best interview shows the medium had ever known, and he was soon interviewing guests like Mel Brooks, Bruce Springsteen, Mavis Staples and even President Barack Obama, who made the long trek out to Maron’s garage studio to record. In 2013, Maron released his memoir Attempting Normal, in which he detailed his rise through the world of comedy and dispensed pearls like: “That’s the big challenge in life — to chisel disappointment into wisdom so people respect you and you don’t annoy your friend with your whining. You don’t want to be the bitter guy.” That same year, he got his own half-hour IFC sitcom Maron, on which he basically played himself. Future projects allowed him to show off his range a bit more, appearing as the director of a women’s wrestling show on Netflix’s GLOW, as a talk-show crew member in Joker and later as record executive Jerry Wexler in the Aretha Franklin biopic Respect. This year, he put his decades in audio to good use with two voiceover roles in animated films, playing Snake in The Bad Guys and Lex Luthor in DC League of Super-Pets. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Willy Sanjuan / Invision / AP / Shutterstock
Sept. 26: Linda Hamilton, 66
Born in Maryland on Sept. 26, 1956, Linda Hamilton, 66, moved to New York City after high school to study acting with Lee Strasberg, and she was soon getting roles in the nighttime soap opera Secrets of Midland Heights and the horror film Children of the Corn. The year 1984 would prove to be a game-changer for Hamilton, who was cast as Sarah Connor in The Terminator, directed by her future husband James Cameron. She parlayed her newfound fame into a regular TV role on Beauty and the Beast, on which she played a New York assistant district attorney in love with a man-beast played by Ron Perlman, and the part earned her Golden Globe and Emmy nominations. In 1991, she returned to the blockbuster franchise that made her for the megahit Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which went on to gross over $500 million worldwide. To prepare for the role, Hamilton reportedly exercised three hours a day, six days a week, and she could bench press 85 pounds. “A woman who grows and transforms on screen is always a wonderful thing to play,” Hamilton said. “Sarah went from a vulnerable, normal girl to someone who finds all of her deep reservoirs of strength and comes through it all.” In 1995, she earned critical acclaim for the TV movie A Mother’s Prayer, winning a CableACE Award for her portrayal of a woman who’s diagnosed with AIDS after the death of her husband. Following her turn as Mayor Rachel Wando in the volcano disaster flick Dante’s Peak, Hamilton had recurring roles on Frasier, Weeds and Chuck. In 2019, she once again appeared as Sarah Connor in Terminator: Dark Fate, before joining the Syfy dramedy Resident Alien, as a general on the hunt for alien life forms. She’s having a blast playing the dastardly role; as she told TV Line, “I come home and go, ‘I got to push a guy off a cliff today!’ or ‘I got to stab a man in the hand with a fork!’ It’s just so well-written, and it’s so much fun to read.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Noam Galai / Getty Images for SiriusXM
Sept. 25: Scottie Pippen, 57
Born in Hamburg, Arkansas, on Sept. 25, 1965, the youngest of 12 kids, future Hall of Famer Scottie Pippen, 57, didn’t have an easy path to his dream career. At the end of his senior year in high school, he was only 6-foot-1 and 150 pounds, and he hadn’t received a single basketball scholarship offer. At the University of Central Arkansas, where he was hired as student manager of the basketball team, he eventually worked his way onto the squad as a walk-on. His college career then took off — it didn’t hurt that he grew seven inches over the next four years. At the 1987 NBA draft, the Seattle Supersonics selected him as the fifth overall pick, then quickly traded him to the Chicago Bulls, where he would find immense success alongside Michael Jordan. Known for his versatility as both an offensive and defensive player, Pippen played a crucial role in the Bulls’ six NBA titles. He was traded to the Houston Rockets in 1998, then spent four seasons with the Portland Trail Blazers before returning to the Bulls for his final NBA season. Along the way, he was a seven-time All-Star (he was named MVP of 1994 All-Star Game) and a seven-time All-NBA player. Pippen also won two Olympic gold medals, the first in 1992 as part of the “Dream Team,” and then again in 1996. In 2010, Pippen was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame; he was actually inducted twice — once as an individual player and once as a member of the Dream Team. Last year Pippen released his memoir Unguarded, which The New York Times called “a master class in settling scores, or creating new ones.” Also last year, to celebrate its 75th anniversary, the NBA released a list of the 76 best players of all time, with Pippen making the cut. This year ESPN included him at number 32 on its list of all-time NBA greats. “Aside from his play on the floor, Pippen is routinely brought up as one of his former teammates’ favorite people to play with,” Nick Friedell writes. “Players trusted Pippen, and they always understood he was a more complete player than he was given credit for because he played in Michael Jordan’s gigantic shadow throughout their time in Chicago.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: George Pimentel / Shutterstock
Sept. 24: Nia Vardalos, 60
Born to a Greek-Canadian family in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on Sept. 24, 1962, Nia Vardalos, 60, studied Shakespeare and musical theater at Toronto’s Ryerson University, before honing her comedic voice with Second City in Toronto and then Chicago. Following a few guest appearances on sitcoms, Vardalos wrote the screenplay for the raucous family comedy My Big Fat Greek Wedding. When she failed to get funding for the film, she presented it as a one-woman play in Los Angeles. As luck would have it, after a fellow Greek, Rita Wilson, saw the show, her husband, Tom Hanks, ended up coproducing the film version. It was an enormous hit, going on to gross almost $369 million worldwide and becoming, at the time, the highest-grossing independent film and romantic comedy. It also earned Vardalos an Oscar nomination for best screenplay and a best actress nod from the Golden Globes, and spawned both a CBS sitcom spin-off, My Big Fat Greek Life, and a 2016 film sequel. Vardalos next wrote and starred in 2004’s cult classic Connie and Carla, about two women who witness a mob hit and hide out in L.A. posing as drag queens. She would make her directorial debut in 2009 with I Hate Valentine’s Day, and she then appeared as an American tour guide working in Greece in My Life in Ruins, which claimed the distinction of being the first time a Hollywood film was allowed to shoot at the Acropolis. She returned to her theater roots in 2016, when she adapted the Cheryl Strayed book Tiny Beautiful Things for the stage at New York’s Public Theater. Ben Brantley of The New York Times called it “a handkerchief-soaking meditation on pain, loss, hope and forgiveness,” and warned audiences to “brace yourself for a good (and good is the word) cry.” Following a hosting gig on The Great Holiday Baking Show, Vardalos played against type in the Lifetime true-crime movie Poisoned Love: The Stacey Castor Story, about a woman accused of killing her two husbands. Next she’ll appear in Netflix’s Ivy + Bean, a series of family films about two girls who are unlikely friends, before reintroducing us to the Portokalos-Miller clan in My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3, which recently wrapped production in Greece. In an Instagram video in June, Vardalos announced the project from her hotel room in Athens and taught her viewers the Greek word for director. “And guess who the director is,” she told her fans. “It’s me!” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Christopher Willard / ABC via Getty Images
Sept. 23: Jason Alexander, 63
Born in Newark, New Jersey, on Sept. 23, 1959, Jason Alexander, 63, made his Broadway debut in 1981 in the short-lived Stephen Sondheim musical Merrily We Roll Along, then appearing in two more shows before he was cast in the 1989 hit Jerome Robbins’ Broadway, a celebration of the great director/choreographer. Alexander served as the narrator, performing comedic numbers like “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” and he won a Tony for best actor in a musical. That year would prove to be a life-changing one for Alexander, as he was cast in the genre-redefining sitcom Seinfeld as George Costanza, a thinly veiled version of series co-creator Larry David. He received seven consecutive Emmy nominations for the role, though, amazingly, he never took home the trophy. On the big screen, Alexander appeared in Pretty Woman and North, and Disney fans might recognize his voice as Hugo, one of the gargoyles in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. He returned to the stage in the 2003 Los Angeles production of The Producers, opposite Martin Short, and he would once again channel Larry David when he replaced the funnyman in 2015 in David’s playwriting debut, Fish in the Dark. As he told Theatermania, his love for the writer is what made him come back to Broadway after 25 years: “I owe so much of the quality of my life to him and his work. The truth is … part of the reason I do things now is because it’s stupid fun. This is the most perfect gig.” In recent years, Alexander has become a welcome recurring presence on shows including Young Sheldon and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and this month, he returns full time in the Comedy Central workplace sitcom Out of Office, from creator Paul Lieberstein (you might recognize him as Toby from The Office). —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Noam Galai / Getty Images for the Michael J. Fox Foundation
Sept. 22: Joan Jett, 64
A pioneering musician who proved definitively that women, too, could rock, Joan Jett, 64, was born in Philadelphia on Sept. 22, 1958, and she got her first guitar when she was 14. While still a teenager, she formed the Runaways with Cherie Currie, Sandy West, Jackie Fox and Lita Ford, and at the time, they were unlike anything else. Jett often performed in a red leather jumpsuit as the Runaways sang about teenage rebellion. They had a bona fide punk hit with “Cherry Bomb,” and when Currie and Fox left the band, Jett emerged as the new lead singer. Upon going solo, Jett was rejected by 23 different record companies, so she decided to form her own label, Blackheart Records, which she cofounded with music producer Kenny Laguna in 1980 — the first time in history that a female artist owned and controlled her own indie record company. She released her self-titled solo debut in 1980, with rock critic Robert Christgau writing that she “comes on tuffer than any gurl in history.” When, a year later, it was reissued as Bad Reputation, it started to really cement her position as a rock goddess. She would have her biggest hit in 1982, when “I Love Rock ’N Roll” topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart for seven weeks. Jett would find herself in the Top 20 four more times, with “Crimson and Clover,” “Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah),” “I Hate Myself for Loving You” and “Little Liar.” She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015, with Miley Cyrus delivering a heartfelt speech: “Instead of changing for other people, if you don’t like how the world is, change it yourself. She made the world evolve; her life and her success is proof that we can self-evolve. I want to thank you for fighting for our freedom, Joan, and I love you so much.” This spring, Jett and the Blackhearts released their first-ever acoustic album, Changeup, which featured stripped-down recordings of such hits as “Bad Reputation.” In a sentimental twist, the album was released just days after the 40th anniversary of “I Love Rock ’N Roll” going number one. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images for Warner Media
Sept. 21: Faith Hill, 55
Faith Hill, 55, always knew she was going to be a star. Born in Mississippi on Sept. 21, 1967, she got her start early, performing publicly for the first time at a 4-H luncheon when she was 7 and later, when she was in high school, forming a band that played area rodeos. Hill moved to Nashville after dropping out of community college, eventually releasing her debut album, Take Me As I Am, in 1993. The single “Wild One” topped the country charts, and the album went triple platinum, earning her the Academy of Country Music Award for top new female vocalist. Following the release of her hit sophomore album, It Matters to Me, Hill married fellow country star Tim McGraw, and they quickly became the industry’s top power couple. Her 1998 album Faith included the crossover pop hit “This Kiss,” earning Hill a spot on VH1’s Divas Live, and the following year, she released Breathe, which would go triple platinum. She also earned her first three Grammys, including for country album and female country vocal performance. Hill and McGraw have recorded a number of duets together, including the Grammy-winning songs “Let’s Make Love” and “Like We Never Loved at All,” and their joint tours have proven phenomenally successful. Hill has also emerged as a serious actress in recent years, following earlier guest turns on such shows as Touched by an Angel and Promised Land and a supporting role in 2004’s Stepford Wives remake. Last year she took on by far her biggest role to date in the Yellowstone prequel 1883, opposite McGraw. The historical drama follows a family of Western settlers who make the long journey from Texas to the Montana ranch that forms the setting of the contemporary drama. “We’ve been married for 25 years,” she told CBS Mornings. “The thing we chose to do was not rehearse together. … We thought the spontaneity is going to be created the moment we set foot on set. Tim is James and I’m Margaret, and that’s who we are, and that’s where we become them, on set.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Amy Sussman / Getty Images
Sept. 20: George R.R. Martin, 74
One of America’s most prolific contemporary fantasy writers, George R.R. Martin was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, on Sept. 20, 1948. At a young age, he began writing monster stories and selling them to kids in the neighborhood for pennies, and he later wrote fiction for comic fanzines. After attending Northwestern University and earning a master’s degree in journalism, Martin secured conscientious objector status during the Vietnam War, and he worked with a Chicago legal assistance foundation for his alternative military service. During that time, he organized chess tournaments and worked as a journalism professor, but he also began to pursue his passion for writing, and he won a Hugo Award in 1974 for his sci-fi novella A Song for Lya. Soon he was branching out with wildly original novels, including 1977’s Dying of the Light, about a festival on a planet approaching apocalypse, and he flirted with other genres, like vampires and horror. In the late 1980s, Hollywood came calling, and he worked as a story editor for CBS’ The Twilight Zone and as a producer on Beauty and the Beast. But all the while, he was working on what would become an epic cinematic saga all his own. In 1996, he debuted the novel A Game of Thrones, which he had been writing for five years. “When I began, I didn’t know what the hell I had,” he later told The Guardian about the process of beginning the series in 1991. “I thought it might be a short story; it was just this chapter, where they find these dire-wolf pups. Then I started exploring these families, and the world started coming alive. It was all there in my head; I couldn’t not write it. So it wasn’t an entirely rational decision, but writers aren’t entirely rational creatures.” The book kicked off a sweeping series inspired by England’s Wars of the Roses that mixed fantasy elements (like dragons) with brutal violence and political intrigue. Future books included A Clash of Kings (1999), A Storm of Swords (2000), A Feast for Crows (2005) and A Dance With Dragons (2011). In 2011, HBO developed the series into one of its biggest shows of all time, both critically and commercially. As a producer, Martin picked up four Emmys for outstanding drama series. He’s far from done with the world of Westeros, and he’s still hard at work on the much-delayed sixth installment, The Winds of Winter. This summer, he helped co-create the Game of Thrones prequel, House of the Dragon, set almost 200 years before the original series. “Game of Thrones and my book version of it, A Song of Ice and Fire, is, in some ways, a classic high fantasy in the mode of Tolkien and many, many writers who followed,” he told The New York Times. “Now, yes, it is true that in a sense, I’m deconstructing those tropes, those myths, the things that were hallmarks. But I’m also following them to some extent. House of the Dragon is more like historical fiction with some dragons thrown in. It’s like a Shakespearean tragedy.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Taylor Miller / Buzzfeed News / Redux
Sept. 19: Sanaa Lathan, 51
The daughter of an actress mother and a director father, Sanaa Lathan, 51, who was born in New York City on Sept. 19, 1971, knew she wanted to be a performer from an early age. After graduating from the Yale School of Drama, Lathan began appearing in films, including Blade, The Best Man and The Wood, in which she starred as Omar Epps’ love interest. The pair would reunite for her breakout role in the 2000 sports romance Love & Basketball, with Roger Ebert writing, “Sanaa Lathan is the discovery. This is her sixth movie … and her chance to flower, and she does, with a combination of tomboy stubbornness and womanly pride.” In 2004, Lathan put her Yale degree to good use, earning a Tony nomination for her Broadway debut in A Raisin in the Sun before going blockbuster with such films as Alien vs. Predator, Contagion and Now You See Me 2. She spent four seasons voicing Donna Tubbs on the Family Guy spin-off The Cleveland Show, then made the leap to decidedly more prestigious TV with her supporting role on The Affair and on last year’s Netflix crime drama series Hit & Run. She also earned an Emmy nomination for her guest-starring role on Succession as the high-powered attorney Lisa Arthur. This month, Lathan makes her feature directorial debut with On the Come Up, about an aspiring 16-year-old rapper, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival before streaming on Paramount+ on Sept. 23. “I want to be challenged and to use all of my talent,” she told The Hollywood Reporter about directing. “I have a lot to give.” Next she’ll return to one of her most popular roles for a spin-off series called The Best Man: The Final Chapters, which streams on Peacock this December. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Rich Fury / Getty Images
Sept. 18: Jason Sudeikis, 47
Born in Fairfax, Virginia, on Sept. 18, 1975, Jason Sudeikis, 47, has comedy in his bones — his maternal uncle is Cheers actor George Wendt! After performing with the improv troupe ComedySportz in Kansas City, where he grew up, Sudeikis took a big leap and moved to Chicago to pursue the art form, and he eventually honed his skills on stages in Amsterdam and Las Vegas. In 2003, Sudeikis joined Saturday Night Live as a writer, before making the leap to featured performer and then becoming an official member of the company in 2006. During his tenure, he became known for such roles and impressions as The Devil, Mitt Romney and especially future president Joe Biden. He later said on a Conan appearance that when he met Biden, “He was instantly as likable as the Muppet version of him would be.” Sudeikis was a natural on the big screen as well, with starring roles in such blockbuster comedies as Horrible Bosses, Hall Pass and We’re the Millers. He also began dating actress-director Olivia Wilde, with whom he has two children, and he appeared as the principal in her feature directorial debut, the high-school comedy Booksmart. In 2013, Sudeikis introduced the world to a character named Ted Lasso, a befuddled American college football coach who finds himself hired by a Premier League soccer team in London, in a viral NBC Sports commercial. Fans found the character charming, but no one could have predicted that he would go anywhere or have a second life outside the advertisement. And then, in 2020, Sudeikis did the unthinkable when he created an entire Apple TV+ sitcom based around the character — and, even more shockingly, it became a huge hit. During the first season, Ted Lasso won seven Primetime Emmys, with Sudeikis himself picking up two, for outstanding lead actor and outstanding comedy series; and it matched its first-year haul with another 20 nominations in season two. “It’s the closest thing I have to a tattoo,” he told GQ about the series. “It’s the most personal thing I’ve ever made.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Karwai Tang / WireImage / Getty Images
Sept. 17: Baz Luhrmann, 60
Known for his ostentatious maximalism and glittery production design, Australian film director Baz Luhrmann, 60, has come a long way since his childhood days in the Outback, where his parents ran a local movie theater and gas station, and his mother was a ballroom dance teacher. After starting out as an actor, Luhrmann — who was born in Sydney on Sept. 17, 1962 — got accepted into the National Institute of Dramatic Arts, and in 1986 he wrote and directed a play called Strictly Ballroom, which he later adapted into his first film. He would soon go on to gain international attention with his modern adaptation of the Bard’s most romantic tragedy, William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, which starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes as the star-crossed lovers. In his review for Rolling Stone, Peter Travers summed up the director’s appeal perfectly: “The rabid flamboyance of Luhrmann’s vision … is meant to make Romeo and Juliet accessible to the elusive Gen X audience without leaving the play bowdlerized and broken. Luhrmann, known as a wizard in his native Oz, where he stages plays and operas, relishes knocking cobwebs off classics.” Next up, he concluded what he called his “Red Curtain Trilogy,” with the Paris-set musical Moulin Rouge!, which went on to win two Oscars and three Golden Globes, including best musical or comedy film. Luhrmann also had great success on the stage, and his Broadway debut, a 2002-03 revival of Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème, picked up two Tony Awards. His next film, Australia, told the story of his home country at the beginning of World War II, with performances from two of the continent’s most famous exports, Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, before he turned his attention to New York: first with his gilded, over-the-top adaptation of The Great Gatsby and then with Netflix’s The Get Down, about the birth of hip-hop, punk, and disco in the South Bronx of the 1970s. This year, Luhrmann focused his lens on another American icon with the critical and commercial smash Elvis. “This is not really a biopic,” he said during a panel earlier this year. “It’s really for me about America in the ’50s and ’60s and ’70s. If you want to talk about America in the ’50s and ’60s and ’70s, at the center of culture, for the good, the bad and the ugly, was Elvis.” He continued: “If it feels a bit like a superhero film, it is. Because actually Elvis is like the original superhero.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Matt Winkelmeyer / Getty Images
Sept. 16: Molly Shannon, 58
Born in Shaker Heights, Ohio, on Sept. 16, 1964, Molly Shannon will perhaps always be best remembered for her six seasons on Saturday Night Live, on which she created a pantheon of original characters, including the “Licensed Joyologist” Helen Madden, NPR host Terry Rialto and the high-kicking Sally O’Malley, who was always proud to shout her catchphrase, “I’m 50!” Her Catholic schoolgirl character, Mary Katherine Gallagher, was so popular that she even got a spinoff film, Superstar, which was not exactly critically acclaimed but has become something of a cult hit in certain comedy circles. In 2007, she teamed up with writer-director Mike White on the indie dramedy Year of the Dog, in which she starred as a secretary whose life begins to change in profound ways after she loses her beloved beagle. Shannon later worked with White again on the Laura Dern–led comedy Enlightened, for which she received her second Emmy nomination. In 2016, Shannon earned rave reviews for the tragicomedy Other People, in which she played a mother dying of terminal cancer, and winning the Film Independent Spirit Award for best supporting female. She would also begin a two-season run opposite Sarah Jessica Parker on the HBO comedy series Divorce that year, and while Shannon would find some particularly juicy film roles over the years (including playing Emily Dickinson in Wild Nights with Emily), she really hit her stride as an in-demand prestige TV regular. On The Other Two, created by two former SNL head writers, Shannon plays Pat Dubek, the mother of a Justin Bieber–like teen sensation, who later gets her own talk show and becomes the new queen of daytime TV. She also found success working with Mike White yet again when she played an overbearing mother-in-law on the blistering HBO satire The White Lotus; and this year, fellow SNL alum Vanessa Bayer tapped her to play a charming home-shopping channel host/mentor on Showtime’s I Love That for You. In April, she also released her memoir, Hello, Molly!, in which she recounts childhood tragedies (a car wreck that killed her mother, little sister and cousin) and comedy triumphs. “Parts are as plain and strong as Hemingway, with some internal monologues that are downright Joycean,” wrote Alexandra Jacobs in The New York Times. “Really. It’s very sad and very, very funny.” For her part, the comedian told The Washington Post, “I hope it can inspire people [to realize] that they can overcome difficult things from their childhood, and to see that it’s great to stick to what you’re passionate about. It’s not always easy, but it does make for a good life.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: David Livingston / Getty Images
Sept. 15: Lisa Vanderpump, 62
One of the most successful women to emerge from Bravo’s juggernaut Real Housewives franchise, Lisa Vanderpump was born in London on Sept. 15, 1960, and she was a self-starter from an early age: At 13, she played Glenda Jackson’s daughter in the 1973 romantic comedy A Touch of Class and went on to appear in children’s TV shows and more than 100 commercials. “I never had any financial help after leaving home,” she once said, “just a good education and a kick in the arse.” In 1982, Vanderpump married Ken Todd, and together they opened a slew of posh restaurants, bars, and nightclubs across London and the U.S. They decided to pack up and move to Southern California in 2005, when their daughter began attending Pepperdine University in Malibu, and they soon were bringing their unique brand of chic, fun-loving restaurants to the States with openings like SUR and Pump. In 2010, she was introduced to the American public when Andy Cohen cast her on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, and she was such a hit that Bravo greenlit a spinoff series, Vanderpump Rules, about the goings-on at her Hollywood restaurant and lounge. Vanderpump makes for great television, so she parlayed her popularity into an appearance on Dancing with the Stars, though she was eliminated early in the season. In 2016, she and her husband founded The Vanderpump Dog Foundation, which was inspired by China’s Yulin Dog Meat Festival, with the goal of promoting more humane treatment of canines around the globe. The organization runs a rescue and adoption center in Los Angeles, which became the basis of a new streaming series on Peacock called, appropriately, Vanderpump Dogs. “I don’t think there’s any kind of emotional dysfunction,” she told Hollywood Life about how this series will differ from her past ones. “It’s all about the dogs.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Rosdiana Ciaravolo / Getty Images
Sept. 14: Melissa Leo, 62
Born in New York City on Sept. 14, 1960, Melissa Leo, 62, got her start in acting the way many other actresses did in the 1980s: appearing on the daytime soap opera All My Children and earning a Daytime Emmy nomination for outstanding ingenue. Following her turn on The Young Riders, a Western series about the Pony Express, Leo took on the role of Detective Sergeant Kay Howard on the acclaimed Homicide: Life on the Street. It would be a few years before she’d translate her success to the big screen, but she had a breakout moment in the 2003 drama 21 Grams. Five years later, she was given the chance to headline a film when she starred in Frozen River as Ray Eddy, a down-on-her-luck woman who takes to a life of crime, smuggling people across the U.S.–Canadian border. Leo was nominated for her first Oscar, with Roger Ebert writing that she deserved the win: “What a complete performance, evoking a woman’s life in a time of economic hardship. The most timely of films, but that isn’t reason enough. I was struck by how intensely determined she was to make the payments, support her two children, carry on after her abandonment by a gambling husband, and still maintain rules and goals around the house. This was a heroic woman.” In 2011, she finally took home the trophy for best supporting actress for her role as the tough-as-nails mom of two Boston boxers in The Fighter, and she famously dropped the first F-bomb ever broadcast during an Academy Awards telecast. In the next few years, she’d find great critical success back on television, appearing in HBO’s Treme, and earning three more Emmy nominations for Mildred Pierce, Louie (winning for her guest appearance) and All the Way, in which she played Lady Bird Johnson opposite Brian Cranston’s LBJ. Since her 2020 appearance in HBO’s I Know This Much Is True, Leo has been keeping extremely busy, with a slew of projects released in the past two years and at least eight in the works or recently filmed: Among them, she’s starred as an incarcerated robber with a terminal illness (Ida Red), a theater actress whose son died under mysterious circumstances (Measure of Revenge) and a shrink at a drug treatment center that’s doing some shady business (Body Brokers). After all, you don’t hire Melissa Leo to play uncomplicated women! —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Evan Agostini / AP / Shutterstock
Sept. 13: Tyler Perry, 53
One of the most powerful tastemakers working in the entertainment industry today, Tyler Perry, 53, was born in New Orleans on Sept. 13, 1969, and overcame years of childhood abuse to get where he is today. After attempting suicide and dropping out of high school, Perry heard Oprah Winfrey talk about the power of writing things down, and he began keeping a journal, which he later adapted into his first musical, 1992’s I Know I’ve Been Changed. He had a rough go of it for his first few years in the industry, even sleeping out in his Geo Metro, but a 1998 remounting of the play proved hugely successful, setting off his path to stardom. In 2000, he debuted what would become his signature character, the tough-talking matriarch Madea, in the play I Can Do Bad All by Myself, in which he played her in drag. Madea would go on to appear in a series of theater productions before making her big-screen debut in 2005’s Diary of a Mad Black Woman, and Perry brought her back for movies like Boo! A Madea Halloween, A Madea Family Funeral and this year’s A Madea Homecoming. His ever-expanding empire went on to include more than a dozen TV shows, including sitcoms (House of Payne), soap operas (The Haves and the Have Nots) and political dramas (The Oval). Most impressively, Perry became the first Black man to own a major movie studio; in 2019 he opened the sprawling 330-acre campus on what was once a Confederate army base. “When I built my studio, I built it in a neighborhood that is one of the poorest Black neighborhoods in Atlanta so that young Black kids can see that a Black man did that and they can do it too,” he said while accepting the Icon Award at the 2019 BET Awards. Outside of his writing, directing and producing work, Perry has begun amassing a formidable acting reel (beyond playing Madea) in films like Gone Girl, Don’t Look Up and Vice, in which he played General Colin Powell. Last year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Perry the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, and he dedicated it to “anyone who wants to stand in the middle, no matter what’s around the wall.” As he explained it, “Stand in the middle ’cause that’s where healing happens. That’s where conversation happens. That’s where change happens. It happens in the middle. So anyone who wants to meet me in the middle, to refuse hate, to refuse blanket judgment, and to help lift someone’s feet off the ground, this one is for you too.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
Tyler Perry is on the cover of the “AARP The Magazine” August/September issue.
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PHOTO BY: Drew Altizer Photography / Shutterstock
Sept. 12: Ben Folds, 56
Born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on Sept. 12, 1966, Ben Folds, 56, rose to prominence with his indie band Ben Folds Five, which made music that he described as “punk rock for sissies.” They had an unexpected radio hit with the very sad song “Brick,” and they released three albums before breaking up and later reuniting in 2011 to tour and record a fourth. In 2001, Folds released his solo debut, Rockin’ the Suburbs, which Entertainment Weekly called “a pop fantasia that seals Folds’ rep as the Cole Porter of underclass underdogs.” He’d bring that wry sense of storytelling to a series of pop-rock albums, but he also began branching out in weird and wonderful ways: He recorded an EP with fellow singer-songwriters Ben Kweller and Ben Lee as (what else?) The Bens, and even produced and cowrote an album with William Shatner. Always a charming cultural critic and screen presence, Folds got into the reality TV business when he served as a judge on the NBC a cappella competition, The Sing Off. Folds has also dabbled in classical music, premiering his piano concerto at the Nashville Symphony Orchestra in 2014, and The Kennedy Center later named him the first-ever artistic adviser to the National Symphony Orchestra. In 2019, Folds released his memoir, A Dream About Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons, which debuted as a New York Times best seller. People called the book “an insightful, touching and often hilarious look back at his life and career, told with wit and good old-fashioned Southern warmth — like Truman Capote, but with more F-bombs.” Last year, he debuted his new podcast, Lightning Bugs, in which he discusses creativity with guests like Sara Bareilles and Jon Batiste. “My guiding light is that I’m trying to find the song in the guest, the subject, in the interview,” he told Rolling Stone. “I’m finding my way in that way.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Bruce Glikas / WireImage / Getty Images
Sept. 11: Harry Connick Jr., 55
Born in New Orleans on Sept. 11, 1967, Harry Connick Jr., 55, was always surrounded by music: His district attorney father and judge mother owned a record store, and he began performing at the age of 5. Connick Jr. studied with Ellis Marsalis before moving to New York City to study at Hunter College and the Manhattan School of Music, and he was soon releasing his first self-titled piano album, in 1987. His first brush with Hollywood came in 1989, when he recorded the soundtrack for When Harry Met Sally…, earning his first Grammy in the process, for best jazz vocal performance. The 1990s saw Connick Jr. branching out as an actor, with roles in films like Memphis Belle, Little Man Tate, Independence Day and Hope Floats, a romance opposite Sandra Bullock. In 2002, he made the leap to the small screen with a recurring role on Will & Grace as Grace’s eventual husband, Dr. Leo Markus, but he’d have some of his biggest TV success playing himself: After serving as a mentor and guest judge for years, Connick Jr. officially became an American Idol judge in 2014, and he later earned three Emmy nominations for his daytime talk show Harry. Over the years, Connick Jr. has also showed off his talents on the Broadway stage, writing the music and lyrics for Thou Shalt Not, a 2001 musical retelling of Émile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin that’s set in 1940s New Orleans, and later starring in The Pajama Game and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. Last year, he returned to TV, appearing as Daddy Warbucks in the well-reviewed Annie Live!, and he also released his deeply personal album Alone With My Faith, which paired traditional spirituals with original songs. During the pandemic, he played all the instruments and sang all the harmonies while recording alone in his home studio in Connecticut. “[The] whole world kinda shut down, and I came home and was locked down and wondering what was gonna happen,” he told Billboard. “And I wanted to make some music, so I started writing music and thinking about music that comforted me. And I found that a lot of the music that I was writing had to do with my faith, or maybe even lack thereof sometimes. I recorded one song, I wrote another song and recorded it, and I started to say, ‘Wow, this could be kind of a snapshot of what I and maybe a lot of other people are going through.’ ” The album resonated with fans and critics, earning Connick Jr. his 16th Grammy nomination. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Gerald Matzka / Picture-alliance / dpa /AP Images
Sept. 10: Guy Ritchie, 54
Born in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, England on Sept. 10, 1968, director Guy Ritchie, 54, was inspired to get into moviemaking after watching Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as a child. Instead of going to film school, he dropped out of high school and became a film-industry runner, and soon he was directing commercials and promos for bands by the mid-1990s. His 1995 short film Hard Case, about four East End of London boys who raise money to enter a card game, caught the attention of Sting’s wife, Trudie Styler, who invested in his feature debut, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, which served as a sequel of sorts to Hard Case and was such a cult hit that it won the BAFTA Audience Award. His 2000 follow-up, Snatch, assembled a cast that included Ritchie regular Jason Statham, Brad Pitt and Benicio Del Toro for a crime caper filled with snappy dialogue and a murderers’ row of colorful rogues. That year, he married Madonna, with whom he had a son, Rocco, and two years later he directed the Material Girl in Swept Away, a remake of the 1974 Italian film about a spoiled socialite who becomes shipwrecked on a beautiful island with a young soldier. The film was a box office and critical bomb, “winning” five Razzie Awards, including worst picture and worst director. Ritchie faced a critical drubbing once again for his 2005 Las Vegas heist flick Revolver, but he started to stage a comeback with 2008’s RocknRolla. The following year, he got into the blockbuster game with his remake of Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey Jr. as the titular detective and Jude Law as Dr. Watson; the film went on to earn two Oscar nominations, pulled in more than $524 million worldwide and spawned the 2011 sequel Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. In 2015, Ritchie continued his streak of remakes, bringing his own hyperkinetic spin to The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, before joining the Disney family with his live-action take on Aladdin. Starring Will Smith as the Genie, the film whizzed past $1 billion in worldwide ticket sales, and it now ranks among the top 50 highest-grossing films of all time. Following 2019’s The Gentlemen, Ritchie reunited with Jason Statham for last year’s Wrath of Man, their first film together since Revolver. He and Statham reteamed once again for their fifth collaboration, the action spy comedy Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, which is currently in a bit of limbo after it was pulled from the studio release calendar. Next up, he’s set to direct Jake Gyllenhaal in the Afghanistan War thriller The Interpreter, and he’s working again for the House of Mouse with his live-action Hercules and an Aladdin sequel. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Daniel Knighton / Getty Images for Paramount Pictures
Sept. 9: Hugh Grant, 62
Known for his foppish romantic leading men, Hugh Grant, 62, was born in London on Sept. 9, 1960, and he got his start with a series of very English films, including the E.M. Forster adaptation Maurice and the biopic Rowing With the Wind, in which he played Lord Byron. In 1994, he broke out with the romantic comedy Four Weddings and a Funeral, which earned him a BAFTA and a Golden Globe. “Much of the mood is set by Hugh Grant’s Charles, whose dapper good looks and bashful manner make him understandably popular as a best man,” wrote New York Times critic Janet Maslin, who called it “a career-making role.” He’d go on to appear in the Oscar-winning Sense and Sensibility before kicking off an impressive run of rom-coms that included Notting Hill, Bridget Jones’s Diary, About a Boy, Two Weeks Notice and the holiday ensemble Love, Actually, in which he played the prime minister. Grant soon began branching out with quirkier roles, including in the Wachowski siblings’ centuries-spanning Cloud Atlas, in which he plays — among other roles — a 19th-century plantation owner, a 1970s nuclear power plant owner and the leader of a band of cannibal warriors in 2321. He took a break from acting to focus on his work with Hacked Off, which fought for stricter press laws in the U.K., and he returned in 2016 to star opposite Meryl Streep in Florence Foster Jenkins, as the husband of the world’s worst opera singer. He told The Hollywood Reporter, “It really was impossible to turn down because it was [director] Stephen Frears and it was Meryl Streep. And it was a really good part: complicated, nuanced.” He next appeared as washed-up actor–turned–criminal Phoenix Buchanan in Paddington 2, which he told Vanity Fair “may be the best film I’ve ever been in.” Grant then followed many of his moviemaking peers to the small screen with a pair of acclaimed (and Emmy-nominated) roles: first, as the British Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe, who’s accused of trying to have his stable-boy lover murdered in the late 1970s in A Very English Scandal; and then as a New York City pediatric oncologist who is a potential suspect in the killing of a woman in HBO’s The Undoing. Upcoming projects include the Guy Ritchie spy comedy Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre and next spring’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. And he’s currently filming the Jerry Seinfeld–directed Unfrosted: The Pop-Tart Story, about the birth of the iconic toaster pastry. The British paparazzi have already shot him donning a Tony the Tiger mascot suit on set. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Kristiana Bumphrey / Starpix / Shutterstock
Sept. 8: Aimee Mann, 62
A celebrated indie songwriter known for her enigmatic yet emotive lyrics, Aimee Mann was born in Richmond, Virginia, on Sept. 8, 1960, and she found her musical voice while studying at the Berklee College of Music in Boston in the late 1970s. After playing with the Boston punk band The Young Snakes, Mann first gained national attention as the lead singer of new wave outfit ’Til Tuesday. Their hit single “Voices Carry” peaked at number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, and they won the MTV Video Music Award for best new artist in 1985. She went solo with the 1993 album Whatever, followed two years later by I’m With Stupid, but Mann would gain her biggest audience to date with the 1999 soundtrack to Magnolia. Director Paul Thomas Anderson used her songs as the inspiration for his ensemble drama, and she performed nine songs on the soundtrack, with the haunting “Save Me” nominated for an Oscar, a Golden Globe and a Grammy. She kept releasing albums, but her wit and quirkiness also made her a natural fit as an actress, and she appeared in such films and TV shows as The Big Lebowski and Portlandia. In 2017, Mann released her album Mental Illness, which she described as the “saddest, slowest, most acoustic, if-they’re-all-waltzes-so-be-it-record” she could write. And she told Rolling Stone she wrote it with the assumption that listeners also view her work as “really depressing.” “I don’t know — people may have a different viewpoint — but that’s my own interpretation of the cliché about me,” she continued. “I mean, calling it Mental Illness makes me laugh because it is true. But it’s so blunt that it’s funny.” Depressing or not, the album won Mann her second Grammy, for best folk album, following her 2006 victory for best recording package. Last year, she released her 10th studio album, Queens of the Summer Hotel, which comprises songs written for a planned stage adaptation of the Susanna Kaysen book and film Girl, Interrupted, about women living in a mental hospital in Massachusetts. “I have an enormous amount of compassion for people who are struggling,” she told the Los Angeles Times. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Nicholas Hunt / Getty Images
Sept. 7: Tom Everett Scott, 52
Born in East Bridgewater, Massachusetts, on Sept. 7, 1970, actor Tom Everett Scott, 52, enjoyed acting in plays in high school but thought he’d pursue a different career once he got to Syracuse University. As he remembers it, he was a sophomore communications major when everything changed: “I went down to the theater and saw everything going on — people jumping around and being idiots — and I thought, ‘This is my home. This is where I should be.’” After graduating, he moved to the Big Apple, where he and a few college friends started a theater company called aTheaterco. In 1996, Scott made his film debut with the Tom Hanks–directed musical That Thing You Do! Hanks has said that he was initially skeptical of hiring Scott for the role because he looked so much like the Oscar winner when he was younger; his wife, Rita Wilson, finally convinced him because she thought he was cute! The next year, he starred in An American Werewolf in Paris, before appearing in such films as One True Thing and Boiler Room. Following an eight-episode arc on ER, Scott would go on to lead his own series, the TNT paramedic drama Saved, in which he starred as an EMT with a gambling addiction. He would return to the basic cable network in 2009 for the gritty cop procedural Southland, which earned raves from critics. In 2016, Scott popped up in the last 15 minutes of La La Land as the new husband of Emma Stone’s Mia. As director Damien Chazelle put it in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, it was the actor’s innate goodness that got him the part: “And the big thing was that Tom is just the nicest guy. That was the key. We didn’t want the audience to think of Mia’s new husband as some kind of a villain.” In 2017, he took on two small-screen roles: as the husband of comedian Andrea Savage in her autobiographical sitcom I’m Sorry, and as Mr. Down on the controversial Netflix teen drama 13 Reasons Why. After playing against type in last year’s Lifetime original movie The Good Father: The Martin MacNeill Story, as a man who may or may not have killed his wife, Scott played another dad role in Amazon Prime’s teen romance The Summer I Turned Pretty. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Cindy Ord / Getty Images
Sept. 6: Rosie Perez, 58
Beloved for her quick wit and immediately recognizable accent, Rosie Perez, 58, was born in Brooklyn on Sept. 6, 1964, and her home borough has been a major part of her career from the start. She made her film debut in Spike Lee’s seminal 1989 film Do the Right Thing, which opens with the actress aggressively dancing to Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” on the streets of Brooklyn. As Lee later recalled to Variety: “Rosie Perez dancing. People were not ready for the opening of that film. That opening is a part of cinematic history.” She would bring those talents to the small screen as the choreographer of the Fly Girls, the house dancers on the TV sketch comedy series In Living Color, earning three Emmy nominations in the process. After starring in White Men Can’t Jump, she received an Oscar nomination for her role in 1993’s Fearless, about a man whose personality changes dramatically after he survives a plane crash. She starred as fellow survivor Carla Rodrigo, and Roger Ebert wrote of her performance, “Perez … is emerging as one of the great new originals in the movies. With her tough Brooklyn accent just a little softened this time, she strikes a no-nonsense, in-your-face note that makes her character quirky and unique.” In 2003, she first appeared on Broadway in Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune, and future stage roles would include The Play What I Wrote, Reckless and the revival of The Ritz, in which she played the role of club singer Googie Gomez, originated by Rita Moreno. Perez codirected the 2006 documentary Yo soy Boricua, pa’que tu lo sepas! (I’m Boricua, Just So You Know!), about the complex relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico. She joined the panel of The View in 2014 and returned to Broadway the next year in Larry David’s Fish in the Dark, in which she starred opposite the Curb Your Enthusiasm star. Following her appearance in the 2018 high-school-set musical TV show Rise, Perez showed off her kick-ass side in the 2020 superhero flick Birds of Prey, in which she played the Gotham detective Renee Montoya in the Batman-adjacent universe of Harley Quinn. That same year, Perez would go on to earn some of the best reviews of her career in The Flight Attendant, for which she earned her fourth Emmy nomination. Earlier this year, she added another small-screen role to her résumé with Apple TV+’s Now & Then, in which she played her first bilingual character, a Miami detective named Flora Neruda who investigates two murders 20 years apart. About her decades-spanning performance, she told Entertainment Weekly, “God bless the hair and makeup department.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Michael Tullberg / Getty Images
Sept. 5: Werner Herzog, 80
Born in Munich on Sept. 5, 1942, director Werner Herzog, 80, grew up in a remote town in Bavaria, near the Austrian border, coming of age during the hardships of the postwar era. He grew up catching trout and playing in the hills and didn’t see his first film until the age of 11, when a traveling projectionist came to his village. After college he traveled extensively through Greece, Mexico and Sudan, and he produced his first short film, Herakles, in 1962. Following a series of boundary-pushing movies that played the festival circuit, Herzog gained international attention for his 1972 historical drama Aguirre, the Wrath of God, which charted the mental and physical decline of Spanish conquistadors searching for the legendary city of El Dorado in the Peruvian jungle. Vincent Canby of The New York Times called the film “absolutely stunning,” writing that Herzog “views all the proceedings with fixed detachment. He remains cool. He takes no sides. He may even be slightly amused.” In the years that followed, he emerged as one of the most influential voices of the New German Cinema movement with ambitious films like Fitzcarraldo, about a fanatical music lover who hopes to build an opera in the middle of the Peruvian jungle, and Where the Green Ants Dream, about a tribe of Aboriginal people who fight back against a mining company. In 1986, Herzog began directing operas, and his career took a shift toward nonfiction, with acclaimed documentaries on his collaborations with Klaus Kinski (1999’s My Best Fiend), bear activists (2005’s Grizzly Man), Antarctica (2007’s Encounters at the End of the World, nominated for an Oscar for best documentary), and the cave drawings of Chauvet, France (2010’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams). Herzog continued making narrative films as well, with later standouts including Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans and Queen of the Desert. And he’s even stepped in front of the camera for some acting roles, most recently as The Client in the Star Wars series The Mandalorian. Recently, Herzog has turned his attention to hot new topics with his latest documentaries: 2020’s Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds, about meteors and comets, and this year’s The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft, about the legendary French volcanologists. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Andrew Morales / SSTK / Shutterstock
Sept. 4: Ione Skye, 52
Born in London on Sept. 4, 1970, Ione Skye, 52, made her acting debut in the 1986 crime drama River’s Edge, but she’d really make a splash three years later, as Diane Court, the romantic lead in Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything. You may remember her as the straight-A student who inspires John Cusack’s Lloyd Dobbler to lift that boom box over his head and blast Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.” In his four-star review, Roger Ebert wrote that “Skye, who was a model before she was an actress, successfully creates the kind of teenage girl who is overlooked in high school because she doesn't have the surface glitz of the cheerleaders but who emerges at the 10th class reunion as a world-class beauty.” VH1 later ranked her number 84 on its list of the 100 greatest teen stars. In the ‘90s, Skye appeared in films such as the goofball comedy Wayne’s World, One Night Stand and Gas Food Lodging, alongside her brother, musician Donovan Leitch. After doing Fever Pitch and a memorable guest arc on Arrested Development, Skye took center stage with the 2018 HBO ensemble comedy Camping, as Carleen, the wide-eyed sister of Jennifer Garner’s type-A Kathryn. “I did a lot of homework on this character, more than any I’ve ever done,” she told Paste Magazine, “because I didn’t quite know who she was, and I really wanted to go for it and make her sort of strange.” Last year, Skye was a recurring character on the NBC disaster drama La Brea and the Australian surfing series Barons. Outside of acting, she has a robust life as a painter and the author of the children’s book My Yiddish Vacation. You can catch Skye next on the upcoming Netflix comedy series Beef, about a road-rage incident that consumes the lives of those involved, starring Steven Yeun and Ali Wong. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: LANDON SPEERS / The New York Times/Redux
Sept. 3: Malcolm Gladwell, 59
Born in London on Sept. 3, 1963, a young Malcolm Gladwell (now 59) moved with his British father and Jamaican mother to Ontario, where he lived in a largely Mennonite agricultural area. As a teen, he became obsessed with American conservative politics, eventually working at a think tank in Washington before entering the world of journalism, first as a business and science writer for the Washington Post, then as the paper’s New York bureau chief and, later, as a staff writer for The New Yorker. In 2000, Gladwell released his debut book, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, in which he wrote about the seemingly magical moment when an idea or trend begins to spread like wildfire; as examples, he looked at disparate concepts such as the sudden rise in popularity of Hush Puppies in 1994 and the equally unexpected decline in crime in 1990s New York City. Although the book had some detractors among social scientists, it has sold millions of copies, and The Guardian even included it on its list of the 100 best books of the 21st century. Future best sellers included 2005’s Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, about the snap judgments we make, and 2008’s Outliers: The Story of Success, in which he explores the phenomenon of high achievement in everyone from tech billionaires to soccer players to the Beatles. The following year he compiled his New Yorker columns into a book, What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures, before diving into history, psychology, religion, science and storytelling for David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants. In 2016, Gladwell leapt into a new medium, when he launched his podcast Revisionist History, which he describes as a “journey through the overlooked and the misunderstood,” with each episode dedicated to giving a second look to an event, a person, an idea or even a song. He also wrote the 2019 work Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know, and last year he released his stunning work of military history, The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation and the Longest Night of the Second World War, in which he analyzes the brutal American bombing of Tokyo and asks if that deadly night may have spared even more lives by averting a planned U.S. land invasion. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Richard Shotwell / Invision / AP / Shutterstock
Sept. 2: Keanu Reeves, 58
Born in Beirut on Sept.r 2, 1964, to an English costume designer mother and a Hawaiian geologist father, Keanu Reeves, 58, takes his first name from the Hawaiian word for “cool breeze over the mountains,” and that chill, laid-back vibe has followed him throughout his career. A hockey player in his youth, the Canadian actor got his big break in the hockey-focused film Youngblood (starring Rob Lowe), kicking off an early career that would see him bouncing from highbrow to lowbrow projects: an Oscar-winning period drama (Dangerous Liaisons in 1988), a slacker time-travel comedy (Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure in 1989), an indie drama about Portland hustlers (My Own Private Idaho in 1991), an action flick about a gang of surfing bank robbers (Point Break in 1991) and even a bit of Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing in 1993). Reeves entered blockbuster territory with the 1994 high-octane thriller Speed, and Peter Travers wrote in his Rolling Stone review, “Reeves is a major surprise; he cuts a sturdy figure far removed from the malebimbo act that made him a star in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and proved ruinous to his so-called serious performances in Dracula and Much Ado About Nothing… But Reeves has the last laugh by delivering a vigorous, no-bull performance that suggests we’ll be able to hear his name in the future without silently mouthing the word dude.” He kicked off T1999 with a run as the prophetic hacker Neo (aka “The One”) in The Matrix franchise, and Empire magazine ranked him as the 68th best character in cinema history. He’d later appear in films such as Something’s Gotta Give and The Lake House, opposite Speed costar Sandra Bullock, before making his directorial debut with the 2013 martial-arts film Man of Tai Chi. The following year, Reeves started another action franchise as the titular John Wick, a former hit man who comes out of retirement to seek vengeance on the men who killed his dog. But it wasn’t all violent, dark roles: Reeves also voiced Duke Caboom in Toy Story 4 and cameoed as himself (hilariously) in the rom-com Always Be My Maybe. And he hasn’t escaped the nostalgic reboot fever that’s swept Hollywood, returning to roles of Ted in Bill & Ted Face the Music and Neo in last year’s The Matrix Resurrections. With two more John Wick movies already announced, Reeves is also making his first major foray into the world of television with a just-announced leading role in Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio’s Hulu adaptation of the Erik Larson best-seller The Devil in the White City. He’ll play visionary architect Daniel H. Burnham, who works on the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair as the first modern serial killer wreaks havoc in the shadows. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: JC Olivera/FilmMagic/Getty Images
Sept. 1: Lily Tomlin, 83
Born on Sept. 1, 1939, in Detroit, Lily Tomlin, 83, grew up admiring comedians like Imogene Coca and Lucille Ball, and she channeled their rubber-faced risk-taking with her breakout role on Laugh-In, which saw her embody such wide-ranging characters as the 6-year-old Edith Ann and the sarcastic telephone operator Ernestine. A critical hit from the start, Tomlin earned her first Grammy and two Emmys by the mid-1970s. In 1975 she made her feature-film debut (and earned an Oscar nomination) as Linnea Reese in Robert Altman’s ode to country music, Nashville. On Broadway, Tomlin garnered a 1977 Special Tony for her solo show Appearing Nitely, and she’d add a best-actress Tony for her groundbreaking 1985 show The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, in which she played a bag lady, a teenage punk rocker, a health nut, two prostitutes, a socialite and many, many other women. Back on the big screen, Tomlin appeared in the beloved comedy Nine to Five, alongside Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton, and later reteamed with Altman for Short Cuts and A Prairie Home Companion. She returned to her TV roots over the years, voicing Ms. Valerie Frizzle on The Magic School Bus and costarring as executive producer Kay Carter-Shepley on Murphy Brown. Among the awards she’s received are the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, in 2003, and the Kennedy Center Honor, in 2014. Despite these achievements, Tomlin never rested on her laurels. In 2015 she staged an impressive comeback when she and Fonda began starring on the raucous Netflix comedy Grace and Frankie, about two night-and-day frenemies who find out that their husbands have been having an affair for 20 years. The role earned Tomlin four more Primetime Emmy nominations — out of a total of 24! — before the show came to an end this past spring. Fonda recently gushed about her pal at the TCL Chinese Theatre’s hand-and-footprint ceremony, tearfully remarking, “Lily Tomlin I think carries an extraterrestrial bag of empathy on her back. There is more empathy than any I have ever met. … Comedy is very hard; it is a lot harder than drama. It’s hard to make people laugh. About 99 percent of comedians make people laugh at the expense of somebody. Never does Lily Tomlin make a joke at someone’s expense.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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